The allure of the latter location (s) brought Gérôme into his most famous - perhaps infamous - body of work, capitalizing on Orientalisme, the French taste for the "exoticism" of the Middle East and the Maghreb.

The issue with the former cover is that it unintentionally reinforced the meme -- that Obama is an Agent on The War Against Terror or, if you prefer, to allow his "exoticism" as a proxy for any remaining legacy of racist bias.